of milk, as there was not enough in the
house left from breakfast, to make sauce for the
dumplings. She went; then the sauce was
made, and the dinner served up to the family.
Having done this, the housemaid prepared to
start for Hackney, and Eliza rested placidly
after her labours, waiting for the bell that would
be the order for clearing away.

Mr. and Mrs. Turner are dining, and Mr.
Turner's father is with them. (Mrs. Turner,
the law-stationer's mother, was at her house at
Lambeth.) The dinner is steaks and potatoes,
and the yeast dumplings. The appearance of the
dumplings is unsatisfactory; they are black
and heavy instead of being white and light, and
Mrs. Turner (vexed at the failure after Eliza's
teasing) remarks the fact to the housemaid, who
brought them up and removed the cover. Mrs.
Turner helps her husband and father-in-law to
some, and takes a small piece of the not very
inviting spongy paste herself. The front door
slams: that is Sarah Peer gone out for the day.

All at once, Mrs. Turner feels a death-like faintness
come over her; a cold dew breaks out upon
her forehead. The room seems to turn round.
Then comes on a violent pain, an extreme
excruciating pain, that increases every moment.
Quietly she rises from the table, steals up-stairs,
and throws herself on her bed almost insensible,
and, as she thinks, about to die. A deadly vomiting
begins, and lasts for hours. Her head and
chest swell, her tongue becomes enlarged. She
remains alone and in great torture, wondering
that no one comes to her assistance, but on
at last going down-stairs she finds both her
father and husband also grievously ill, and
apparently poisoned; but how, by what, and by
whom, they have as yet no suspicion.

Almost immediately after Mrs. Turner left
the room, her father-in-law, going down-stairs
quietly to his own special parlour, met his son
in the passage at the foot of the stairs. He
had been very sick, and his eyes were swollen
and staring. The old man was alarmed, and
in a few minutes afterwards, he too began to
violently vomit, and instantly an intolerable
burning pain spread across his stomach and
chest. In the mean time, Roger Gadsden, the
apprentice, had gone down into the kitchen
during the family dinner, perhaps in search of
some tit-bit, perhaps to whisper a word of
flattery to his new sweetheart, Eliza. The
untoward dumplings had just been brought
downstairs, and there was a dumpling and a half
lying black and heavy on the plate. Gadsden
took up a knife and fork, and playfully began to
experiment on the cold dumpling, but only ate
a piece about as big as a walnut. He then
took a bit of bread and sopped up the white
sauce in the boat. These young sedentary
apprentices can eat anything and at any time. He
then returned back to his high stool in the office.
Ten minutes afterwards—that is, about half-past
three—his master, Mr. Robert Turner, came to
him, and leaning on one of the desks,
complained of being frightfully ill. About ten
minutes after that, the terrible epidemic, that
had spread like wildfire from life to life, affected
the apprentice; he, too, fell ill, but not so ill
as his master, who had eaten a dumpling and
a half. The family being all apparently dying,
the apprentice volunteered to go off to Lambeth
and fetch Mr. Robert Turner's mother. On
his way, the apprentice became much worse, and
thought that he too was going to die.

Old Mrs. Turner arrived in Chancery-lane
about eight o'clock; she found her son, her
husband, and her son's wife, stretched on their
beds in agonising pain, and still tormented by
sickness. Very soon after old Mrs. Turner's
arrival, Eliza Fenning was also taken ill, and
began to vomit and show the same symptoms
as the rest. Mrs. Turner met her at the stairfoot,
and, having already heard the story from
the frightened apprentice, began immediately
about the unfortunate dumplings.

"Oh, those devilish dumplings!" said the
old lady.

Eliza replied, "It was not the dumplings,
but the milk, ma'am."

"What milk?"

"The halfpenny-worth of milk that Sally
fetched for the sauce which Mrs. Turner
made."

"That cannot be; it could not be the sauce."
Nor could it have been, because Mr. Robert
Turner, who had not touched the sauce, was
worse than any of the others.

But Eliza had her own theory (poor girl),
although it slightly wavered.

"Yes," she said; " for Gadsden ate a very
little bit of dumpling, not bigger than a nut,
but he licked up three-parts of a boat of sauce
with a bit of bread."

The family had already sent for a friend and
neighbour. They now sent for Mr. John
Marshall, a surgeon. He arrived about a
quarter before nine, and at nine Eliza's fellow-
servant returned from Hackney. The family
were already suspicious and alarmed, because
Eliza, who had cooked the fatal dinner, had not
evinced any interest in their illness or any desire
to help them. How suspicion puts out the
eyes even of honest people! The reason was
obvious to any one but the frightened law-
stationer and his family. The poor girl was
found by the surgeon lying unheeded on the
stairs, in great agony, and with exactly the
same symptoms as the Turners. At that time
Mr. Robert Turner and his wife were both in
bed, complaining of violent and excruciating
pain, and affected with irrestrainable sickness.
The symptoms of all were unmistakably those
following poisoning by arsenic.

The suspicion of the family had already fallen
strongly and threateningly upon the poor young
servant-girl. In the morning following that
alarming day, the elder Mr. Turner began
seriously to prosecute inquiries. He tried to
ascertain if poison had ever been kept in the
house, and if any traces of arsenic could be
found in the kitchen, or in the relics of yesterday's
dinner. All at once he remembered (in a
flash) that there had been for a long time two